Hats Off To Amazon’s Customer Service

People either love or hate that company, don’t they? Even with my limited investigative journalistic tendencies, I have not come across anyone who stands in the middle.

I love them. Actually, that’s an understatement. I adore them.

Why?

Because they empower.

Because they are all about free market economy.

Because without them I would be a less fulfilled person.

Okay, enough of going gaga over Amazon for idealistic and abstract reasons. Today’s post is not about those. Instead, it is about a mundane, yet critical aspect of any successful business.

Customer Service!

Amazon’s customer service, to be precise.

If you have been following my blog, or twitter, or facebook, you know that I released the second book of my pentalogy, The Lightbound Saga. I am an indie author, so I do the publishing myself, on Amazon. I use Createspace, Amazon’s outfit for print books and on KDP, the one for Kindle ebooks.

The way Amazon’s databases are set up, or at least the way my accounts are set up, the two editions (print and ebook) are not automatically linked. So, for example, if you had searched for my new book, Maia and the Secrets of Zagran (let’s call it the SZ from now on) yesterday morning, you would have seen two entries for SZ in the search results. One would have been for the print edition and the other for the ebook.

The process of linking these two editions is through Authorcentral, Amazon’s cozy little corner for authors. You would have to go to the help section and open a ticket. And this is where we get into today’s topic of “customer service.”

In the above-mentioned Help section, there is a “Contact Us” widget. There are two ways to contact Amazon through there

Email – disclaimer says it usually takes 24 hours

Call Me – Estimated wait: less than 1 minute

Yesterday, after the books were out there, I wanted to start the linking process quickly. So, Email was clearly not an option.

I looked at the “Call Me” stat and thought, hmm . . . 1 min, looks good. But then, it looks almost too good to be true! Clicked it, and found this! Okay . . .

Filled in my callback number and pressed “Call me now.”

Anyone want to guess how long it took my phone to ring?

5 seconds!

5 SECONDS is right folks. I could not believe it.

Yes, Amazon is a Fortune 100 company, but it’s not like every company on that list treats customers this well. I have tried the services of many companies on the 100 list, none, yes, no one until now has swept me off my feet with this level of excellence.

So, hats off to you, Amazon!

Hats off to you, Jeff Bezos!

Keep on doing what you do. We need more like you.

PS: Oh yes, the CS rep who picked up the call was very efficient and had the SZ set up like I wanted pretty quickly. The whole call lasted, yes, another number to note – 2 minutes.

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S.G. Basu is an aspiring potentate of a galaxy or two. She plots and plans with wondrous machines, cybernetic robots, time travelers and telekinetic adventurers, some of whom escape into the pages of her books.
Once upon a previous life on planet Earth, S.G. Basu trained to be an engineer, and her interest in science and her love of engineering shows up time and again in her books.